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Tench Pie
Butter a pie-dish rather thickly, and line the edges with a good crust. Put in the tench, season with pepper and salt, and grate a little nutmeg over it. Place small lumps of butter here and there upon it, and pour over it a little claret and water. Cover the dish with crust, and bake the pie in a well-heated oven. Have ready a little nicely-seasoned strong gravy, and when the pie is done enough pour it in through the hole at the top. A good pie may be made with tench and eels. The fish should be cut into convenient-sized pieces, and placed in layers in the dish with a little pepper and salt, chopped parsley, and an anchovy cut small between each layer. Time to bake, about an hour. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian freshwater fish pie of the raised-crust, gravy-through-the-vent school. The main obstacles today are sourcing the fish and interpreting the oven.
- Well-heated ovenRead this as 400-425F for the first 15-20 minutes to set and colour the pastry, then 350-375F for the remainder of the hour. The pie is deep and wet, so the crust needs early heat.
- TenchA carp-family pond fish, once common on English tables and now rarely sold. Farmed common carp, or a firm freshwater fish such as pike or perch, stands in. Tench in particular carries a heavy coat of slime, which is usually scalded off with boiling water and scraped away before skinning.
- BonesTench and carp carry fine intramuscular bones that filleting does not fully remove. The recipe's tench-and-eel version directs cutting the fish into convenient-sized pieces; warn anyone eating it, or use a boneless substitute.
- EelsIf you make the tench-and-eel version, buy eel already killed and skinned. Note also that European eel is listed as critically endangered and its trade is restricted in many places; farmed Japanese or American eel is easier to obtain, though both of those species are also listed as endangered, and simply using more carp is the least troublesome option.
- Claret and waterAny dry red wine, about 1/4 cup wine to 1/4 cup water for a pie of this size. Its job is acidity against a rich, slightly muddy fish, not depth of flavour.
- The hole at the topThis is the hinge of the method. Cut a proper vent before baking so steam escapes and the crust does not lift off, then pour in the hot seasoned gravy the moment the pie leaves the oven, through a funnel. Poured in cold, or later, it will not distribute.
- Strong gravyA well-reduced stock, seasoned and thickened only slightly. Victorian 'strong gravy' generally meant a much-reduced meat stock, which would often set to a jelly when cold.
- AnchovyIn the layered version the anchovy is seasoning, not garnish. One or two salted or oil-packed fillets, chopped small, per layer is enough; they dissolve and season the whole dish.
- YieldThe original gives three or four persons, which suits a pie dish of roughly 1 to 1.5 quarts and about 1.5 lb of prepared fish.
Tench belongs to the era when an English country household got its fish from its own water rather than a fishmonger. The species tolerates stagnant, low-oxygen ponds better than almost any other European freshwater fish, which made it a mainstay of monastic and manorial stew ponds from the Middle Ages onward and kept it on the table long after sea fish became widely available by rail. Its old nickname, the "doctor fish," comes from a traditional belief that other fish rubbed against its slime to heal their wounds; the claim is folklore rather than biology. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the later nineteenth century, tench was already a distinctly rustic, second-rank fish, and the recipe reflects that: nutmeg, claret, anchovy and a heavy crust are all there to flatter a soft, muddy-tasting flesh, and the suggestion to eke it out with eels points to a cook working with whatever the pond yielded.